I still have not been paid from my big mammoth job of the year. The shopping mauls are full of too much glare and shine - nothing I want in there, anyway.
Its been a dismal year for financial wellbeing, and I'm so far down the bottom of that barrel I've probably tunnelled halfway to Australia by now.
HOWEVER
I have some regular work lined up for next year!! Woohoo! I shall be teaching the first year design and drawing course at Wits School of the Arts, for the whole year. Only six hours a week, which is perfect because then there's a guaranteed income trickle, and I still have plenty of time to nurture the other stuff. I've missed teaching, and this way I get to do it without being an institutionalised slave. So that's really great.
AND
I'm going to Zambia for Christmas! Yes, last minute decisions, last minute bookings, NO last minute financial miracle (yet! - always leave space for the possibility!) but couldn't miss the opportunity of spending time with the youngest and most beautful members of my genetic pond - my sweet dear cousins the Kenyan revolutionaries. So I shall be sipping cooling pimms or gin and tonic rather than warming brandy, and watching cloudstacks that will not deliver snow but soaking rains that leave the ground steamy afterwards. We will see elephants, and hippos and frisky baby impala. We will wait for the river to rise so we can go on the boat, and we will overrun lodge swimming pools and bars that are supposed to be reserved for paying guests. We will check our shoes for scorpions and our pillows for creepy crawlies. Tis the season to be knee high in mud. We will slap at drunken mosquitoes and our shoes will slip and slide and our clothes will never again be free of the black luangwa mudstains and we will no doubt play too much scrabble.
I can't wait.
12 comments:
Knee deep in mud - that sounds like a happy holiday indeed! Take a bag full of biscuits with you and meet all the nice people you are looking forward to. I wish you a grand time, with no shopping malls (I hate them, too). Your new job sounds just right, but don`t let the others get away with not paying you! In case you need a lawyer, I can provide one!
Sounds like a wonderful Christmas trip -- I'm so happy for you.
Oh, and I loved the term "shopping mauls." I might have to use that one (giving you due credit, of course). (: )
Huh my comment on your last post vanished like an old oak table. Ah well. Enjoy the valley and greet the revolutionaries.
ah Tam - enjoy it all xx
do old oak tables vanish?
My uncle Bertram's old oak table completely vanished. 'Twas on the night of the great Stepney fire. And on that same terrible night, his house and all his other things completely vanished too. So did he, in fact. It was a most perplexing mystery.
Enjoy Zambia. I'll have a cobra beer for you in Malaysia.
great news! this trip is exactly what you needed to do, by the sounds of it! have a wonderful time knee deep in the zambian mud with the revolutionary relatives!
we have a very old oak table, will have to really keep an eye on it from now on!
Geli, thanks - I will get paid for the job, its not like that - its just bureaucratic delays of the worst kind. The joys of freelancing.
Adrianne, you welcome to use it freely - just avoid getting mauled yourself.
Miranda - remember it write it again.come on.
Old oak tables - they say polish is better than varnish.
And fush - do enjoy Malaysia, what a blast. Hope you'll bring us shimmering word pictures in the new year
haha Tim, down pat!
Hooray Tam! good for you,sounds like you have been working hard and its great you're going. "end of year delights" Indeed!!
what a lovely, lovely description of impending Zambian Christmas. Enjoy x
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